The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  Having vented his spleen, the commander of forces calmed himself with almost daily fox hunts, galloping for miles over the Portuguese sierras. Once he had restored his spirits by the chase, Wellington would begin to use his time in winter quarters the way he liked best: in rooting out and eliminating the imperfections of his Army.

  Scovell’s restless ingenuity was such that, during the shrinking days of November and December 1812, he used every opportunity to try to discover those few parts of the grand chiffre that still eluded him. It was as he worked away on this task that a copy of Soult’s August letter finally found its way to Frenada.

  NOTES

  1 ‘On 12 August, Soult composed the letter’: a copy of his letter resides on the Public Record Office in the WO37 class. Unfortunately for us, this is one of the messages for which the ciphered original is unavailable. Napier suggests that the Soult letter was only read after being captured in Joseph’s baggage at Vitoria in June 1813, but I do not believe this to be the case.

  – ‘no message from Paris had reached his desk for more than four months’: this fact, along with the details of how it was being sent, was contained in the letter itself.

  2 ‘The king’s French secretary of state took part in the evacuation’: Miot de Melito, the quote is from his memoirs.

  3 ‘on 1 September, Wellington agreed to attend a bullfight in his honour’: some sources say the last day of August. I have gone with this date because it is in Scovell’s journal, WO37/7b, which also provides the colourful passages that follow.

  4 ‘General Bertrand Clausel, the Army of Portugal’s commander, despaired of the morale of his troops’: this was not intercepted by the allies. It is reproduced in Du Casse, Correspondance du Roi Joseph.

  5 ‘On 27 September, Major Cocks heard that a rumour’: this comes from the excellent book based on his papers by Julia Page.

  6 ‘After one operation, Burgoyne wrote home bitterly’: Burgoyne’s published journal is an anodyne volume. The letters were obtained later by Sir Charles Oman and used in his great work.

  – ‘the usual tensions had been exacerbated by a rebuke Wellington had given him during their advance to Madrid’: this unusual evidence of an open clash between the general and Scovell emerges from an addendum (probably added months or even years after the event) to his journal. I have not quoted verbatim, since the writing is bad even by the standards of Scovell’s often atrocious hieroglyphics.

  – ‘Scovell was directing hundreds of men in this task and … spent £22,477 in little over one year on it’: details from accounts found at AO 1/171/488

  7 ‘He wrote back to the commodore’: Wellington’s Dispatches, 11 August 1812.

  – ‘A diplomatic cipher had been sent out, but there had been problems’: these emerge in Wellington’s Dispatches of 29 August and 2 September 1812.

  – ‘to quote an example given by him, the code 134A18 could be deciphered as follows’: it is among his remarks on codes in his Conradus notebook, WO37/9.

  8 ‘The ruler’s first interview with the marshal produced some lively arguments’: Jourdan’s Memoires.

  * Citizens of Madrid.

  PART IV

  Winter Quarters, the Vitoria Campaign and Afterwards

  1. DONT. BELIEVE. WE. WERE. EVER. DECEIVED. 481. THE. 985. 186. T. 843. 688. AND. COLONEL. S. 174. VELL … IS. THE. 854. ERSON. WHO. MADE. THEM. OUT.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Frenada, December 1812 to January 1813

  It was about midnight on a December’s evening and few people were stirring in the bivouac. The 200 members of the convoy were mostly sleeping around faltering embers of camp fires they had built earlier. They were a little north of Valladolid on their way back to France and were doubtless tired from many hours in the saddle. Most huddled under blankets, trying to shut out the cold and find a spot where they could dream of home and sleep unmolested by the stones or roots beneath them. The security of this little convoy, it is clear, was lamentably managed. Perhaps its commander felt that the plains of Segovia were safe enough.

  The leader of that French caravan had not reckoned on the change that had befallen the country. The British might have relinquished Madrid and withdrawn towards Portugal, but the occupiers were to discover that things had not been restored to the status quo ante Salamanca. On the contrary, everywhere in Spain guerrilla bands had been inspired by the summer’s events. They had finally seen the Bonapartist edifice in Spain shown up as a hollow façade and many entertained the hope that 1813 would see their country free of the French at last. In the hills, guerrilla chiefs like Longa ruled large tracts; collecting taxes and administering the land like robber barons. Down on the plains of Segovia, the territory was quite open and hit-and-run tactics were called for.

  Joseph’s convoy had been watched as it went into its bivouac in that December twilight by the guerrilla band of a certain Jeronimo Saornil. This chieftain was quite different from Don Julian Sanchez or Longa, whom the British considered gentlemen. Saornil had been a villain in jail in his native Valladolid before the French invasion and the new authorities had unwisely released him. A British officer who had encountered Saornil’s band in the summer of 1812 wrote, ‘they are complete banditti, two-thirds clothed in things taken from the enemy. The only pay they receive is from plunder.’ When Marmont had pulled the Army of Portugal back to the Duero line in July, Saornil had come to the attention of the British. He was able to provide captured messages in territory that was unfamiliar to Don Julian’s men. Naturally, Saornil had greatly appreciated the silver paid on the nail for these enemy papers.

  That December evening, he timed his attack carefully. The few sentries placed by the French barely had time to shout an alarm as Saornil’s horsemen burst out of the darkness. The element of surprise was so complete that even the guerrillas baulked at murdering the enemy in their beds. Some 180 were taken prisoner and two British officers who had been under escort were set free. As his men started stripping the convoy’s members of their valuables, Saornil surveyed his spoils.

  An ornate saddle lying beside a svelte horse caught his attention. The owner seemed to be some kind of secretary to King Joseph. Saornil cross-examined him. Wearing a dark-green hussar’s jacket tied up with a red sash, and a top hat bearing the skull and crossbones motif, the guerrilla chief must have struck terror into his prisoner. The king’s servant took one look into the unshaven face of this pirate and knew that his only choice was to cooperate or die. He handed over a tiny key and explained its use. Saornil examined the saddle and fiddled with a brass ornament on its side, sliding it back to reveal a keyhole. Turning it, a small compartment built into the thick leather under the pommel dropped open. Inside was a package of documents. Breaking the seal, he examined one. Large amounts of text had been written in the king’s grand chiffre and there were several such dispatches folded together. Saornil wagered that the British would pay a high price for this. He would take them to Lord Wellington in person.

  *

  Settling into the little farmhouse that would be his billet for the winter, Scovell turned his mind to more personal matters. His wife Mary had been left behind in Lisbon all these months of campaigning. With little chance of the British Army moving forward until late spring, or of the French trying to force the frontier, she would now be safe in Frenada: it was time to send for her.

  Meanwhile, the Army moved into its winter quarters in frontier villages. Headquarters was set up in the same grindingly poor village that it had occupied the previous winter. The better sort of Frenada inhabitant had a two-level dwelling, but the ground floor was reserved for livestock. The most a staff officer could hope for was a small room in one of the single-storey farmhouses that formed the village. Only the commander’s house, on Frenada’s little square opposite the church, had a room large enough for Wellington to entertain fourteen or fifteen officers to dinner.

  Those who had not wintered before at this impoverished upland Headquarters, like Francis Larpent, thought it ‘wr
etched’. Larpent was a London lawyer hired by Wellington as part of his plan to enforce some order on his unruly soldiery. The new Judge Advocate wrote of his own accommodation, ‘I am literally buried in papers, saddles, portmanteaus, bundles, bedding, panniers etc and have no room to give a visitor but by standing myself.’ Larpent soon discovered that George Scovell was one of the few men in Frenada capable of erudite conversation and they became firm friends. It was perhaps an indication of the narrow intellectual horizons of most of the Army’s officers that Scovell became such a valuable find to this highly educated outsider. In his journal, Larpent noted Scovell’s impressive intellect and the administrative efficiency that he had brought to the Guides, post office and communications generally.

  There was another attraction to seeing Scovell, of course: his wife. Somehow, he had obtained lodgings large enough for them both to live in comfort and to entertain four or five guests at their makeshift dinner table. Larpent wrote: ‘I have dined here with Major and Mrs Scobell [sic], the only lady here; I there for the first time (to the credit of the lady) got a tender fowl, and a piece of mutton, for even at headquarters they kill and eat wholesale, all tough, and the meat etc managed very toughly.’

  Larpent and the other guests did not just eat well in this rude Portuguese cottage, but enjoyed games of cards afterwards with George and Mary. What more agreeable way to follow the lady’s roast than with a hand of loo, winner takes all? An invitation to one of these ‘very pleasant little dinners’ became an ace in Scovell’s hand during the long winter quarters, especially in helping to draw De Lancey or Somerset into the schemes Scovell began to hatch for the 1813 campaign.

  As was usual, many of the better-connected sort went home for the winter. One officer who had departed under a cloud was Colonel James Willoughby Gordon, who had served briefly as the Army’s Quartermaster-General during the autumn. Soon after his arrival, Gordon started sending indiscreet and often pessimistic accounts of the campaign to political friends, most of them Whigs fiercely critical of the Peninsular War. Wellington discovered his behaviour when several details from one of his dispatches to the secretary of war appeared in the Morning Chronicle before the letter had even reached the minister’s office.

  Colonel Gordon had been imposed on Wellington by the Duke of York. Any new QMG had to struggle to insinuate himself into this tightly knit circle, for comparisons with the departed George Murray were inevitable. Gordon was also having to exert himself among those like De Lancey, Somerset and even Scovell, who had been hard at work on that glorious day at Salamanca. Since Gordon’s conduct was completely unprofessional, it became a simple matter to dispose of him. Wellington’s letter to the duke about the affair managed in one short passage to show the general’s belief in a strict Headquarters hierarchy, his contempt for Gordon and perhaps even an ability to reprimand a member of the royal house:

  the staff officers of the army are attached to me to enable me to communicate my orders to my inferiors, and otherwise to assist me in the performance of my duty; but not to carry communications with my superiors … Your Highness may depend upon it that nothing of the kind shall occur in the future.

  Gordon’s indiscretion annoyed him all the more because following the setback at Burgos and losses on the retreat, Wellington was extremely sensitive to the notion that his operations during 1812 might be considered a failure in London. The general’s ADCs awaited the daily post from Lisbon with some trepidation, for if he read a newspaper article critical of the war, it was sure to sour his mood for the remains of the day. He wrote to the secretary of war, complaining,

  from what I see in the newspapers I am afraid that the public will be much disappointed at the result of the last campaign, notwithstanding that it is in fact the most successful campaign in all its circumstances, and has produced more important results than any campaign in which a British army has been engaged for the last century.

  He trumpeted the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz as well as the victory of Salamanca before conceding, ‘the only occasion on which I have been seriously mistaken was at Burgos’.

  Those newspaper accounts of parliamentary debates also included criticism of the Ministry from a number of Tory grandees, including Wellington’s brother, Lord Wellesley. There was a new twist, though: their assertion that the Burgos campaign showed the government had not done enough to support the Army. This marked a turnabout, for, following Salamanca, this line of attack seemed more representative of the mood of the country and of the Houses of Parliament than the prophecies of doom made by Whigs and Radicals throughout the previous four years.

  Whatever the newspapers might say, the victory at Salamanca had made the general’s reputation both with the Ministry and with the wider European public. He now had the power to pick or discard those he worked with and no longer cared a jot whether this offended party interests. The Tory Major-General Charles Stewart, Adjutant-General for three years, had gone on a sort of unlimited leave from the Army early in 1812. At the end of the campaign, it had been the turn of the Whig Gordon. Wellington could now choose his Staff by his own criteria, not by those of the political patrons of Horse Guards. Men of good family and military merit, that was what was required. His victories also meant he was no longer as dependent on a narrow cabal of Tories to sustain his position, the general telling one Member of Parliament in a letter from Frenada, ‘as I have long ceased to think of home politics, it cannot be said that I am of a party different to that to which any other person belongs. I serve the country to the best of my ability abroad’.

  One more sacrifice was required to exorcize the demons of Burgos: the senior Royal Artillery officer at Headquarters. Wellington put this unfortunate colonel under such pressure that he resigned and the general sent him on his way home with these brutal words:

  as you state that you don’t feel yourself equal to the magnitude of your situation … I can feel no scruple … in pleading guilty to the charge of not placing confidence in you … I have found that you were not so capable as I had believed you for the arduous task which you had undertaken.

  Wellington then asked London for the return of George Murray, his previous QMG. The request was granted, and the Scot who managed to combine zeal and charm in equal measure appeared in Frenada early in 1813. Once back in charge of his old department Murray returned to his office as Quartermaster-General and became the second most important man in the Army in practice if not by seniority.

  There were also many items in the newspapers that crossed Wellington’s desk at the end of 1812 that gave him satisfaction. The beginning of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in October had caught the British popular imagination. Caricatures showed ‘General Frost Shaving Little Boney’. A giant wielding a razor marked ‘Russian Steel’ was shown trampling French armies and grappling with a tearful Bonaparte.

  By the time the scale of Napoleon’s defeat was known, Wellington had set off for Cadiz. He left, accompanied by Colonel FitzRoy Somerset, on 12 December. The Spanish regency let him know it was willing to give him supreme command of all their armies for the coming campaign. The precise terms of this arrangement needed to be tied down face to face.

  Those remaining at Frenada would have read The Times of 17 December with fascination. The paper published an ‘Extraordinary Gazette’ devoted to Napoleon’s failure in Russia, telling its readers:

  Buonaparte is wholly defeated in Russia; he is conquered and a fugitive. And what can we say more? We have seen his army pass from victory to victory; we have seen it overthrow kingdoms, and oppress peasants – violate every human right, and diffuse every species of human misery. And now where is it?

  As Christmas approached, the little square outside Headquarters was abuzz with gossip about the latest events. Staff officers and generals up from their divisions strolled in greatcoats and fur-lined caps, trading the latest rumours: Napoleon had fled his army; the entire host, 500,000 men no less, had perished in the snows. If the French generals had grumbled one year befo
re that they were stuck in Spain while others were going to win glory against the Russians, now it was the turn of British officers to rue the fact that they were unable to witness the spectacle of a general débandade* of Napoleon’s mighty army in the east. It was into this hubbub that the distinctive figure of Saornil and his bodyguards arrived on horseback, bearing their valuable cargo.

  The guerrilla chieftain went to the door of Headquarters only to be received by Colonel Campbell, the head of Wellington’s household. That would not do, he had important French dispatches that could only be delivered into the hands of the general himself. That would be quite impossible since Lord Wellington was abroad and might not return for some considerable time. Saornil was implored to share his information. But the mustachioed guerrilla was quite firm: he had to see Wellington in person. These were letters from King Joseph to Napoleon himself; they could only be delivered to someone of the highest rank.

  It took some hours to convince Saornil that he must hand over the papers promptly if they were to be of any use at all. Eventually the Spaniard agreed, on the promise that Wellington would accord him every honour and civility once he returned to Frenada.